Friends and family mourn Alon Lulu Shamriz, one of three Israeli hostages who were mistakenly killed by the Israeli military while being held hostage in Gaza by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at his funeral in Shefayim, Israel.
Credit: Reuters
In hostages square, everyone is waiting for someone.
Inbar Haiman and I began our relationship almost two years ago. We bonded over our shared love of graffiti as art students in Haifa, Israel, and I soon fell in love with her kind heart and creative soul. Over 100 date nights, 20 acts of extreme graffiti tagging and a few all-night conversations about the rest of our lives later, she went to volunteer at the Nova music festival.
She was last seen in a video that I cannot bring myself to watch, being dragged, terrified and bleeding, away from the festival toward Gaza. I’m told you can see the light in her eyes dimmed. More than 70 nights later, Inbar is still being held hostage by Hamas, along with at least 16 other women, about 100 men and two young children. The Red Cross has still not been able to visit her or confirm her health.
Now, as the world finally opens its eyes to the horrors that Israeli women faced on Oct 7 and the fears we all carry about what women in captivity might still be experiencing, bringing Inbar home is a matter of unparalleled urgency.
Since early October, I have slept mostly in the silver two-person tent that we spent our last night in together. Three days before she was kidnapped, we pitched it the fertile earth just south of the Sea of Galilee, after a night exploring a secret hot spring. Today our tent is pitched on the cold concrete just north of the Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, in a place now known as Hostages Square.
In Hostages Square, everyone is waiting for someone. It is a pop-up neighborhood more diverse than any other in Israel — religious and secular, Arab and Jew, wealthy and poor all living together, hoping.
My neighbors and I fill the days with meetings and interviews, trying to keep up the pressure to return our loved ones, along with our spirits. Former residents of the square who have had family members released come back to support us, and a river of visitors ebbs and flows well into the night, nourishing us with art, music and home-cooked comfort food in foil trays.
During Hanukkah, the holiday when we fight back against the darkness, we lit little candles in the square together every night, one for each of the hostages still in captivity. The miracle, our tradition tells us, was that a tiny pitcher of oil lasted eight nights, renewing the spirit of our ancestors. Our oil has lasted for 10 weeks, but it cannot last forever. With every day, I fear the chances of seeing Inbar alive get a little bit smaller.
Over the weeks, Hostages Square has turned into Israel’s heart, a temporary capital made of and by the people. More than a vigil site, it is a living, breathing organism with its own microclimate of emotions that rise and fall over the days. I often seek refuge from it all in my tent, where I can feel Inbar’s presence. We are here in protest — before the Israeli government, which should know that no military objective is more important than bringing our loved ones home alive, and before the world, which should know that nothing can return to normal while they are gone.
In the tent I have written and rewritten a letter to Inbar, one that I hope the Red Cross will deliver for me if it can get to her. It tells her that her best friend at the festival survived the massacre, that “Free Pink” — Pink is her graffiti tag — has been sprayed all over the highways and railways of Israel. I tell Inbar she has to stay strong for the other hostages who might be with her, that they need her love and empathy now, even more than I need her. I tell her that I love her. I tell her that all the people in Hostages Square send their love, too.
Sitting outside, I ask questions of my neighbors and the visitors who pass through. What is Israel fighting for, if not for Inbar’s life? What would victory mean without her returning alive? Are we still the society of Gilad Shalit, the lone soldier whom Israel fought for years to return, a country for whom no one person is too small to be left behind? Are we still the nation of dreamers, who cherish and choose life?
I will wait for the answers in our little tent, however long they take to arrive. Like Inbar, all truly beautiful things are revealed in their own time.